Education question

[SephStorm]

I have been thinking about this for a few days, and I have just considered that it may be beneficial to ask my peers this question.

I am not a fan of traditional higher education in the US. Specificly the Assocaites and Bachleors degree levels. However, it would appear that it is a wise, if not required career move, and will continue to be so in the future.

As of now I am planning on attending Western Governors University online. I am interested in their BS in IT Security program obviously, because I would like to work in that field. I feel it would be a good learning experience, hopefully their curriculum will give the ability to learn some of the concepts I am waiting on.

Recently in my journey to learn what is required in the field, I found that I needed a better understanding of networks. This lead me to Cisco, and their certifications. As I started learning, I looked at WGU, and realized that the have a BS IT Network Administration degree program. I feel that even as a Security proffessional, a solid understanding of networks is necessary, and barring finding a quick way to calculate subnetting, its fun.

Both I feel would help me get a job in the future. I could go either way and still recieve training in the other, and I could still pursue a Masters in security after either degree.

Does anyone have any suggestions, questions or comments?

[pureh@te]

As someone that holds one of those IT security degrees, I can tell you its pretty much a joke. The things I need most when it comes to "Hacking" are:

Good search fu' skills
Semi-Proficient in a few languages. i.e ruby,perl,python or C
A extremely solid foundation in tcp/ip, ports, protocols. i.e. reading wireshark data

All the crap I learned in my "security classes was pretty much dumb.

i.e writing snort rules, john the ripper, securing windows

Just my 2 cents

[webtrol]

I think the other side of the coin is that if you would like to work for a big corporation, a degree is often seen as a initial requirement for consideration.

While many people here can give you more relevant information to IT security field ( im more IT dev), in my experiance it is harder and harder to get past HR without a diploma from a collage of some kind.

[SephStorm]

Originally Posted by pureh@te

As someone that holds one of those IT security degrees, I can tell you its pretty much a joke. The things I need most when it comes to "Hacking" are:

Good search fu' skills
Semi-Proficient in a few languages. i.e ruby,perl,python or C
A extremely solid foundation in tcp/ip, ports, protocols. i.e. reading wireshark data

All the crap I learned in my "security classes was pretty much dumb.

i.e writing snort rules, john the ripper, securing windows

Just my 2 cents

I believe most degrees are worthless, but I don't have one, I can only base my opinion on what I can see. I see a system that pumps out individuals with four years of "knowledge" split between a few hours here and there, over six or seven classes, etc. little to no actual hands on learning. but this is the world.

Anyway, I prefer interpersonal learning, which is one of the reasons I was against online learning, but it seems to be the way of the future.

Webtrol is also correct. after four years in the military and years doing tech support to users in home and work environments and certifications, I never got one call back for any of the Teir 1 or T2 positions I applied for. Even I noticed is that looking at the application, nothing I could put under education.

[lupin]

I did an IT Security based Masters Degree and it actually was reasonably useful, not so much for gaining l337 "hacking" skillz but definitely for being able to think holistically about security, as well as understand the associated business processes and how security fits in an organisation. Don't discount these skills, they are very important, but they are obviously not the whole picture.

For actually learning technical skills nothing beats on the job hands on experience. To actually perform at a high level technically you need to learn your skills from actually doing, and to a certain extent taking particular technical training courses (SANs and offsec are about the only ones I have done that actually really worked in this regard, at least for me).

What it comes down to is a higher education certification looks good on your resume, and helps you either get to the interview or land the job. My advice - go do it. You may consider your time wasted from a learning perspective, but it is worth it to get that certificate.